Posts Tagged "club rugby"

Just as the Wallabies were running out onto Cardiff Arms Park and the until-then invincible All Blacks were preparing to face Ireland in celebratory, baseball-loving Chicago last weekend a group of Wellington Kiwi old rugby players were remembering returning from an amazing grand world rugby tour.

I have supported Eastwood Rugby Club ever since I can remember. My maternal grandfather played for them after the war. In fact, he died while watching them play in ABC television’s “match of the day” from his home in Mudgee, NSW.

I got some of these ideas from reading comments in another post and I just went from there. Sorry if it seems like one big comment, but I just thought it was big enough to have its own post and a new conversation.

For many years now I have watched a strange thing happen at rugby matches. Whenever a ball is kicked out near a line (halfway, 22 etc), the touch judge (assistant referee), invariably sets the lineout right on the line, with the two teams lined up either side.

The news in The Australian that the club rugby championship between 2009 premiers Sydney Uni and Brothers is off is a frightening sign of the problems facing rugby not just in Queensland, but NSW and Australia.

If there’s one thing that the Roar’s rugby posters can agree on, it’s that they can’t agree on anything. Whether it’s the third tier, club versus province, the plight of the game, grass roots, ELVs, coaching, cash, JON, Robbie Deans or the tightness of modern rugby jerseys, all are fair game.

The ARU needs to rethink the strength of our current third tier. At the moment, after the Super season, non-Test Super players are returning to the club ranks, mainly in Sydney, but also Queensland, ACT, West Australia, and (hopefully) soon to be Victoria, as well.

Sydney University won their fifth consecutive Shute Shield premiership 24 – 19 by playing its traditional hard graft forward game and direct running in the backs, guided around the field brilliantly (until the last 15 minutes) by a cool, clever Daniel Halangahu.

The New South Wales Rugby Union will conduct an investigation into an incident where a player was punched by a spectator during the closing stages of Saturday’s Shute Shield Elimination Semi-Final between Gordon and Warringah.